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Who Is This Hornswoggler?

Andrew Wheeler has had a varied career in publishing and related fields. He spent 16 years as a bookclub editor (mostly for the Science Fiction Book Club), and then moved into marketing. He marketed books and related products to accountants for Wiley for eight years, and now works for Thomson Reuters on large online legal products. He was a judge for the 2005 World Fantasy Awards and the 2008 Eisner Awards. He also reviewed a book a day for a year twice. He lives with The Wife and two mostly tame sons (Thing One, born 1998; and Thing Two, born 2000) at an unspecified location in suburban New Jersey. He has been known to drive a minivan, and nearly all of his writings are best read in a tone of bemused sarcasm. Antick Musings’s manifesto is here. All opinions expressed here are entirely and purely those of Andrew Wheeler, and no one else.

Friday, February 04, 2011

This world is full of editorial cartoons, designed to prove to all of us the immediate, blinding insight of their creators, and cause us to instantly be a convert to whatever particular political philosophy the cartoonist happens to hold. Well, they would, if only we could understand them -- but, all too often, we can't.

No one is out there explaining what those bizarre pictures of three monkeys (labeled "Soros," "Queen Elizabeth," and "the Yen") are doing with that nuclear weapon, nor why they're making those famous three-monkey faces. And so I'll just have to step up and do it.

Sure, there's The Comics Curmudgeon, but he focuses on strip cartoons. And there's Comics I Don't Understand, but he only rarely attempts editorial cartoons. And Daryl Cagle posts a lot of political cartoons -- his own and from others -- with some commentary, but he never explains them. So there's clearly a need unfulfilled here.

If I were a smarter, more mercenary man, I'd spin off a whole new blog for this idea, with a fancy design and lots of Google Ads. But I'm not, so it gets rolled into Antick Musings like every other random whim and thought.

With the hope that this will continue, whenever and as long as confusing editorial cartoons appear, let's begin:

Bob Gorrell, 2/4/11:Obama took over the US government from his slain former boss in 1980, just like Hosni Mubarak did. I can't believe you don't remember that.

Clay Bennett, 2/4/11:Repealing Obamacare will suck the blood right out of sick people's bodies!

Dick Locher, 2/4/11:Global warming means that it's summer all of the time, everywhere!

Joel Pett, 2/4/11:Rand Paul has roughly the same level of ideological consistency andcourage of his convictions as any other politician. Also, remember when "compromise" was actually a good thing in politics?

Rob Smith, Jr., 2/4/11:The new GOP majority in the House has already gutted masses of domestic spending programs. Also, anything government does that doesn't have a gun or bomb in it is girly stuff, anyway.

Scott Stantis, 2/4/11:The real victim of Hosni Mubarak's reign is the poor, poor USA, which has been horribly abused by his crook and flail. Also, there has been no new iconography for Egypt in four thousand years.

Signe Wilkinson, 2/4/11:Federalism means that you can petition higher levels of government for funding, and, thus, work your way up to God. Also, St. Peter has retired and been replaced by a hipster, daddy-o.

Jerry Holbert, 2/4/11:Wives are evil, fat, humorless shrews. And men aren't much better. Oh, for the peace of death.

Steve Benson, 2/4/11:Every single person purchasing a gun is a mass murderer.

Chuck Asay, 2/4/11:The new Republican House leadership is serious when they talk about reducing the budget; it's not merely a convenient stick to hit the President with. No, really! They are! (Feel free to swap the position of "Republican House leadership" and "President" to taste.)

Robert Ariail, 2/4/11:No country is allowed to change its government without the US President's approval, sorry. Also, editorial cartoonists are still using train metaphors fifty years after the rest of us.

Matt Davies, 2/4/11:Someone actually knows what the Congressional GOP position is on Egypt. No, wait -- someone actually cares what the Congressional GOP position is on Egypt.

David Cohen, 2/4/11:The camel, representing Egypt, is going to eat the flower of democracy, and then the flower of democracy will...grow stronger in its stomach? Be destroyed by the strong grinding teeth of the camel? Be confused by a bizarrely mixed metaphor?

Paul Fell, 2/4/11:The unrest in Egypt will unleash their secret weapon: a bioengineered giant killer octopus living just below the Aswan Dam.

Please go on and continue your lives, that little bit more enlightened by the visionary images of some of America's greatest cartoon thinkers.